Pages

ReNewShaw Twitter

Monday, June 25, 2007

Shiloh Has Wasted $271,081.50 Since 2005

If I were a Shiloh parishioner, I would seriously consider diverting my tithes to a more worthy organization. Since 2005, Shiloh has wasted $271,081.50 in church funds to maintain its portfolio of vacant properties in Shaw. That's $271,081.50 in funds not spent on helping homeless, missionaries, seniors, children, widows, or orphans. That's $271,081.50 not spent on outreach, church planting, congregational life, and facility maintenance/upgrades. That's $271,081.50 spent on holding onto real estate instead of changing lives. This number will grow each year, especially because the city is incorrectly not taxing 1533 9th Street presently (Joseph Martin and Alex Padro are reportedly looking into this), a vacant structure for which Shiloh received a grant of $340,000 from the city to rehabilitate but failed to do so and lost the grant after several years.

The following is a rundown of payments by property as calculated by a neighbor and frequent commenter on this blog, modthinglet (to whom I'm incredibly grateful for looking up, compiling, and calculating all of this).

COMBINED TOTAL TAXES PAID FOR SHILOH'S VACANT PROPERTIES FROM 2005 to 2007:$271,081.50

It's really astonishing that Shiloh doesn't seem to recognize the opportunity costs associated with maintaining their vacant property portfolio. Hopefully its parishioners will realize this and give to more worthy causes.

8 comments:

Anonymous
said...

Awesome. Someone should print a bunch of spreadsheets and leave them for parishioners to pick up on their way into church. I imagine when that collection plate comes around they'll think even harder about why their hard earned 10% is blown on that and other "indirect" work for the community...

I'm really quite curious if they are actually paying these or not... My icky feeling in my gut is telling me that this is just being zeroed out by the City on the basis of that they are a Church. I hope I'm wrong. I've been thinking if someone specifically ask this question to OTR and provide actually receipt information. Is that something that would be covered under DC's freedom of information act?

davester, this information is from the DC tax assessment database. The database specifically lists these numbers as receipts of amounts paid. The detail actually shows interest charged for late payments. I'm going to try an html tag so I can fit a link so you can see a sample of the raw data.receipt info

The taxes paid should be 4 times that since the properties are quite underassessed. One property is currently assessed at $297,700. The assessment for 2008 is $505,900. Still, you would be very hard pressed to buy any property for that price. What do you think it would sell for, especially considering the location?

Ed - good question. I don't know what the fair market value would be for the properties. As Shiloh has let them deteriorate so badly, a significant rehab is needed on each one to bring them up to a habitable condition.